Rising costs of Fourmile Fire, others raise question of who should pay

Nationwide firefighting bills have doubled over the last decade

By Laura Snider Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
11/06/2010 10:47:33 PM MDT

Updated:
11/06/2010 10:47:50 PM MDT

A slurry bomber drops a load of fire suppressant near a threatened home on Sept. 6 -- the first day of the Fourmile Fire. The vast majority of the $10 million tab to fight the blaze will be picked up by the state and federal governments, said Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle.
(
MARK LEFFINGWELL
)

In the hours after the Fourmile Fire began to burn on Labor Day, Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle was not out on the front lines, coordinating the firefighters or planning the attack strategy.

He was doing something that would ultimately prove to be as important, maybe more so: preparing to send a fax.

"My job, when the fires starts, the first thing I have to do is find the state forester and we start doing this complexity analysis," Pelle said. "We have to fax these forms to the state -- it's very fast, and very furious."

The forms Pelle was working on in his office with Allen Owen, state forester for the Boulder District, had dozens of questions.

What's the relative humidity? Size of the burn? Number of structures in danger?

The answers to these questions are meant to describe the complexity of the fire.

And the complexity, which is represented by a total number of points as calculated on the forms, determines whether the state will intervene, both with its manpower and with its pocketbook. And the state, once it has taken charge, will decide when and if to call in the federal government for assistance.

So this type of detail-oriented paperwork is critical for local governments because it starts the process that may ultimately save them from footing an enormous firefighting bill. In the case of the Fourmile Fire -- which cost about $10 million to fight -- the vast majority of the tab will be picked up by the state and federal governments, Pelle said.

But not everyone agrees that's a good thing. The cost of fighting wildfires across the country has escalated -- doubling in the last decade to $3 billion annually -- and along with cost increases has come a discussion about who should bear the burden of paying to put out the flames.

An 'expensive little fire'

The Boulder County Sheriff's Office -- which is in charge of fighting fires when they grow beyond the capacity of local fire protection districts -- doesn't have a wildfire budget, per se. Pelle has money to pay a crew of wildland firefighters and his emergency services unit. But expenses such as slurry drops or road closures are above and beyond.

So without state or federal reimbursement, the county commissioners are forced to transfer money from an emergency reserve to cover the costs, which can be substantial.

The 84-acre Dome Fire -- which started just west of Boulder on Oct. 29 and forced evacuations within city limits -- was not large enough to merit state or federal funding. But it was threatening enough to homes on the edge of town for the sheriff to call for air support and help from nearby agencies.

In all, the cost of fighting the Dome Fire could approach $1 million. And though the sheriff has asked the city of Boulder to chip in some money, the out-of-pocket cost to the county could end up being greater than the bill for the Fourmile Fire, which destroyed 169 homes, according to Pelle.

"The Dome Fire was a very expensive little fire," he said. "If it had been way up in the mountains, it wouldn't have gotten much attention. But we were, literally, right on top of houses and in grasses and shrubs where fire spreads quickly."

Growing development in the West

The growing amount of development in or near forested areas is one of the principal causes for the nationwide increase in wildland firefighting costs, according to Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research group that studies land-management issues in the West.

The cost of fighting a wildfire goes up exponentially once saving homes becomes part of the equation, according to Ray Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics.

And for many federal, state and local agencies -- as was the case with the Dome Fire -- the fires their staffs are fighting are threatening structures that aren't within their jurisdiction.

This disconnect between the agency fighting the fires and the agencies allowing the development is a problem, according to a 2006 audit report by the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Forest Services on rising fire-fighting costs, which can top $1 billion a year.

"Homeowner reliance on the federal government to provide wildfire suppression services places an enormous financial burden on the Forest Service," the report says. "It also removes incentives for landowners moving into the wildand-urban interface to take responsibility for their own protection and ensure their homes are constructed and landscaped in ways that reduce wildfire risks.

"Assigning more financial responsibility to state and local government for wildland-urban interface wildfire protection is critical because zoning and planning authority rests entirely with state and local governments."

A national wildlife insurance plan?

In Boulder County, where about 60 percent of land in the wildland-urban interface is developed, land-use rules are already quite strict in relation to building new homes in the mountains. The houses must be built of ignition-resistant material, and homeowners must have a wildfire mitigation plan and an emergency supply of water specifically set aside for firefighting efforts.

And while Boulder County's wildland-urban interface is the most developed in the state, it's not likely to become worse, since there are few available building lots.

But Rasker of Headwaters Economics argues that steps can still be taken nationally to shift the burden of fighting wildand fires onto those who benefit the most.

"The majority of the costs are paid for by the (Bureau of Land Management), the Forest Service and (the Federal Emergency Management Agency)," Rasker told the Camera earlier this fall. "Only 2 percent of all homes in the West are in the wildland-urban interface. It's not most of us -- it's a handful of people. But the cost of defending those homes is paid by the federal taxpayers at large. ... There ought to be a cost disincentive that reflects the true cost of living there."

Headwaters Economics released a white paper last year that lists 10 possible ways to stem the rising costs of fighting wildfires, which includes everything from education to reducing the federal fire-fighting budget to inducing local governments to make changes.

"We're not advocating for any of these ideas," Rasker said. "What we're saying is that it's time to get a conversation started."

One solution laid out in the white paper calls for the creation of a national fire insurance and mortgage program that would mirror the national flood insurance program, which has been in effect for almost 40 years. The flood program requires people who live in areas prone to flooding to buy extra insurance if they have a mortgage from a federally regulated or insured lender.

The true cost

Even if a program like the insurance plan proposed by Headwaters Economics were able to defray the cost of fighting the actual fire, the universal cost of having a wildfire is often far greater than the money spent to suppress the flames -- and those costs are often incurred by local governments.

The true cost of a wildfire, according to the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition, includes everything from rehabilitation of the land to loss of tax revenue to an increase in respiratory health problems.

The 2002 Hayman Fire in Colorado cost $42 million to put out. But that was only 20 percent of the true cost of the fire, according to a study by the coalition, which put the tab for rehabilitation alone at $39 million.

In the case of the Fourmile Fire, the county may well be stuck with a large bill for everything from erosion control to providing Dumpsters and water supplies for people in the mountains who are trying to clean up the debris from their burned-out homes.

And the county also stands to lose a large chunk of revenue from property taxes, since even the homes that survived in the area may lose 30 percent of their value or more. In all, county Assessor Jerry Robersts estimates that the county will lose $100 million in property value due to the fire.

For now, the county officials are tallying costs as the go, applying for grants when they can, and keeping their fingers crossed that it snows in Boulder County before another fire starts to burn during this unusually hot and dry autumn.